Unlike the
commentators, the bookies have to back their theories with cash. Their
expectations are clear. For them, an overall majority for Labour is the most
likely result in May 2015 – Ladbrokes will give you only 11/8, and Paddy Power
5/4 on this outcome. A hung parliament looks to them less probable than a
Labour victory, with the two firms offering 13/8 and 7/4 respectively on no
party winning outright.

The odds on a Conservative
majority look comparatively remote. Paddy Power will give you 11/4, and Ladbrokes
a tasty 3/1 on such a result. As far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned,
Ladbrokes expect their most likely haul to be between 21 and 40 seats – and the
odds show they believe Nick Clegg’s party is more likely to end up with fewer
than 20 than to win more than 40.

With the polls as they
are, and political prospects as they currently seem, it would be hard to argue
that the bookmakers are seriously misguided. Any realistic survey of the
political landscape surely shows the odds are against the Tories metaphorically
as well as literally.

The consistent
double-digit Labour lead is an obvious place to start. It may be lower than
that enjoyed at this stage in the cycle by previous Oppositions that went on to
win, but that need not matter. As I said at the start of Project Blueprint in 2011, the combination of Labour’s traditional
support and left-leaning former Liberal Democrats means that Ed Miliband ought
to be able to put together 40 per cent of the vote without getting out of bed.

Moreover, the impending
demise of the boundary review means he could still win with a smaller vote
share than the Tories could. The size of the lead the Conservatives need for a
one-seat majority is the subject of intense psephological debate – but whether
it is four, seven or eleven points, the scale of the movement required is clearly
evident.

David Cameron needs to
expand the Conservative voting coalition: hold onto the voters who supported
the party in 2010, win back those who have defected, keep those who have
joined, and persuade those who are open to considering the party but are not
yet ready to say they would vote for it tomorrow. Phew!

This unenviable task is
made harder by the fact that the modernisation of the party remains incomplete,
in the sense that too many people whose support it needs mistrust its motives,
do not think it shares their priorities, and do not think it embodies the
values it says it does. This applies particularly to those who thought about
voting Tory in 2010 but decided against it. While they trust Cameron and
Osborne more than Miliband and Balls to manage the economy, they do not think
the Conservatives stand for fairness or opportunity.

But it also applies to
many of the defectors, who voted Conservative in 2010 but say they would not do
so in an election tomorrow. It is often supposed that most of these have gone
to UKIP, but in fact only a third of them have done so: Tory defectors are more
likely to have moved to Labour or to say they do not know how they will vote.
By no means are they all traditional Conservatives repelled by Cameronism,
whatever may be argued to the contrary by some recalcitrant backbenchers.

That is not to say that
UKIP is irrelevant. But an even bigger danger would be for the Conservative
Party to misdiagnose the problem and the factors behind it, supposing that it
could win people back through a greater emphasis on Europe combined with
signals that we share the disgruntlement with modern Britain that motivates
many of UKIP’s supporters. As my research published last month showed, this
would not only fail on its own terms but end any prospect of attracting people
who have previously voted Labour or Liberal Democrat.

The thing that most
unites those who have switched to the
Conservatives since the last election is that they trust the Tories more than
Labour to run the economy, and respect Cameron for sticking to tough decisions.
But those willing to take unpleasant medicine for the good of the country
constitute a limited market. It takes a very public spirited voter to support
the wider national good if he feels he has personally lost out from the
decisions of a government, or would personally benefit from a different one.
With more – most – of the cuts still to come, the number of people feeling they
have gone too far and too fast (that is, have come a bit too close to home) can
only grow. There is little understanding of the end to which austerity is the
means, the picture of a better Britain for which the Conservatives will be
asking people to vote.

So: Labour need fewer
votes than the Tories for a majority and it will be easier for them to find
them; the boundary review that could have helped is probably history; the
perceptions that put people off the Conservatives in 2010 and before are as
powerful as ever; the problem of defectors threatens to tempt the party towards
bad mistakes; and the thing that best characterises such converts as the party
has won is their Spartan embrace of harsh measures – suggesting that there cannot
be many more waiting in the wings. For the time being, the bookies’ judgment
looks sound.

But politics can
change, and so can the odds. As I found in Project
Red Alert last November, Labour faces a strategic dilemma of its own: many
of the new supporters it has picked up since the election hope for a return to
the days of lavish public spending, while other potential Labour voters fear
that, back in government, the party would once again spend more than the
country can afford. Sooner or later, one of these groups is going to be
disappointed. Try as he might, Ed Miliband will struggle to postpone this
reckoning until after the election.

The Lib Dems will
almost certainly do better on the day than their poll numbers currently
suggest, since local factors and popular MPs are a more important part of their
appeal. This is another reason why Labour’s vote share is soft.

Despite the gloom, the
Conservatives remain more trusted than Labour to run the economy. This is not
an election winner in itself: the Tories were ahead on economic management
right up until the Labour landslide of 1997. But the economy will be a central
issue at the next election in a way that it was not when Tony Blair swept to
power, and by adopting Tory spending plans, he and Gordon Brown had neutralised
fears of Labour profligacy in a way that Miliband and Balls have not. Voters
now face a clear choice of economic programmes: one that sounds intuitively
right to many, however much they dislike it, and one that seems to promise less
debt if only we would borrow more. When it comes to making the decision, voters
may well opt to see through what has been started.

The approaching need to
make a decision will also sharpen the contrast between Cameron and Miliband.
The Prime Minister’s ratings are not what they were, and Miliband has grown
into the job more convincingly than many expected. But Cameron remains ahead
overall, and when it comes to measures like representing Britain abroad or
taking the right decisions even when they are unpopular, Miliband is scarcely
in the game. This will matter more as the choice becomes more real.

With two years and five
months to go, there is too much we don’t know: how the dynamics of the
coalition will play out, what will happen if the Lib Dems panic, the pace of
economic recovery, developments in the Eurozone, the contents of the PM’s
long-trailed “Europe speech” and the reaction to it, whether or not Labour and
the Lib Dems will continue to vote tactically for each other, the direction of
the Conservative campaign under its controversial new management… and they are
just a few of the known unknowns.

As was the case with
Obama and Romney, historical precedents can always be deployed to show that
neither side can possibly win. I have never bet money on politics and I am not
about to start now. The bookies know what they are doing. Yet in a couple of
years, I hope the chance to treble your money on a Tory majority may look in
hindsight like an attractive proposition. But don’t bet on it!

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